Embarrassing tackling effort by Raiders

There is a laundry list of problems for the 0-2 Raiders, and second on the list is probably the tackling. (Running game No. 1. Lack of any defensive playmakers is also high on the list.)

Oakland made Reggie Bush look like Barry Sanders on Sunday, and couldn’t stop a Miami offense with a rookie quarterback making his second start, an undersized running back and no front-line receivers.

On Bush’s first touchdown run, a 23-yarder where he tried to bounce it outside but then came back in, he broke tackles by four Raiders — cornerback Joselio Hanson, defensive tackle Desmond Bryant, safety Michael Huff and cornerback Shawntae Spencer. On his second score, a 65-yard sprint around the left end, linebackers Philip Wheeler and Rolando McClain took bad angles — at medium speed — and Bush sped around the corner and could not be caught by Huff or safety Tyvon Branch.

On Ryan Tannehill’s touchdown pass to tight end Anthony Fasano in the fourth quarter, McClain whiffed horribly on his tackle attempt at the 14 and Fasano rumbled in for the score.

“I thought (the Dolphins) did a good job, a nice job of blocking,” Raiders coach Dennis Allen said, “But I thought at the end we didn’t tackle as well as we need to tackle. So we’re going to go back and look at it and see where we need to make our corrections. We’re going to work to get better next week.”

A distraught Tommy Kelly added, “We didn’t tackle, we left that in the locker room too, we just let (Bush) run loose”

“We have a lot to do,” Branch said. “We have a lot to watch on film and make some corrections.”

To his credit, Allen didn’t use the humidity or long trip back East as excuses for his team wilting in the second half. The Raiders were outscored 28-3.

“I’m not going to use those factors as a crutch,” Allen said. “At the end of the day we’ve got to coach better. We’ve got to play better. They were the better team today. They out executed us. We’ve got to do a better job.”

Briefly: The Raiders started their first-half possessions at their 16, 8, 7, 14, 18 and 12. Brandon Fields helped Miami’s field position by averaging 53.2 yards per punt. “We haven’t helped our offense out with field position,” Allen said. “We need to take the ball away and create short fields. We can’t go 80 yards on every drive.” …

We covered the running problems at length in today’s newspaper. Carson Palmer said the blocking scheme takes time to master. “You don’t just install a bunch of plays and get really good at cut blocking and giving him those cutback lanes,” Palmer said. “It’s something that we have to continue to work at, and we will. We’ll get better at it each practice. He’s 100 percent the right guy for this system.”